He sat down on a rock, even though it was damp. All of a sudden his weariness and depression threatened to overwhelm him. With a sigh even he thought was pathetic, he decided he was as much at sea with his own life as he was with the search for Louise Akerblom's murderer.
Where do I go from here? he said to himself. I don't want anything to do with ruthless killers, with no respect for life. I don't want to get involved in a kind of violence that will be incomprehensible to me as long as I live. Maybe the next generation of policemen in this country will have a different kind of experience and have a different view of their work. But it's too late for me. I'll never be any different from what I am, a pretty good policeman in a medium-sized Swedish police district.
-The White Lioness
Those are the thoughts of Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander, a detective operating out of Ystad, Sweden. At that point in The White Lioness, poor Wallander has no idea how involved he will become in the ruthless violence of the story's villains, making decisions that cause him to even question his status as a "pretty good" cop.
It all starts as a missing persons case. Right away, just in his reaction to those circumstances, I realized that Wallander was a different sort of cop. He's not jaded, for one, not one of those world-weary policemen with a chip on his shoulder who's too smart for his own good. He's sick with worry over the case, especially because he has a hunch that it's not just a missing persons case - he has a gut feeling that it's murder. And he really, really doesn't want it to be.
Perhaps it's because he's Swedish, or perhaps it's just his personality, but Wallander is a remarkably human, relatable detective. He's not a genius, but he works hard and cares a lot - perhaps too much, for a cop. His work overwhelms his life, and he's crushed by the unrelenting strain of pushing through one terrible event after another. He cries a lot.
Not that I blame him, and that's part of the reason that I love him as a character. If I were handling a missing persons case turned murder investigation, which went on to have ties to ex-KGB agents and a South African hitman, I would be pretty upset as well. Wallander is a provincial cop, and he's really not equipped to deal with all of that. He does the best he can, which involves making quite a few mistakes. I found the novel all the more compelling for it.
The novel also goes for long stretches that don't involve Wallander at all, and focus more on characters navigating the political unrest of early 1990s South Africa. I found this part interesting as well - I studied that period in one of my favorite college courses - although I did miss Wallander during first extended passage set outside of Sweden. Mankell does an excellent job tying it all together, and I really was unsure how the good guys would be able to save the day.
I am absolutely looking forward to more Wallander books. I would definitely recommend them to mystery fans - although I know some people are not wild about sad sack characters, in which case you might want to steer clear. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, the BBC/Masterpiece Theatre Wallander series is also worth checking out - it definitely helped me to picture the Swedish seaside (which looks absolutely lovely). I myself am part Swedish, though I know next to nothing about the culture, so I appreciate Wallander for that reason as well.
Up next: I have quite a bevy of books to choose from at this point, but I think I'll go back to the YA well and try The Mysterious Benedict Society.
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